Monday, September 30, 2013

The Milwaukee Brewers' Ryan Braun won't be getting Gov. Scott Walker's endorsement, at least not any time soon.
Walker said he and his two sons, Matt and Alex, all big Brewers' fans, were disappointed and angry "that he lied to us as fans."
In a telephone interview Tuesday, the GOP governor said that "it was
bad enough that he broke the rules, but the fact that he didn't
immediately fess up to it, that he dragged it all out...It's not just
what he did, it's that he strung us out for so long."

Gov. Scott Walker announced in a press release Tuesday that Wisconsin is
now ranked second in economic growth for the first time in the state’s
history, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of
Philadelphia’s coincident index.

Top officials with the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
are warning Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Wisconsin Manufacturers &
Commerce and others that they are misusing a monthly index produced by
its top economists.
Walker in recent speeches has been touting
figures from the “Philly Fed,” claiming they show Wisconsin’s economy as
No. 2 in the nation. WMC has been using the same number in a series of advertising buys, thanking Walker for putting the state on the road to prosperity.
But
officials with the Philly Fed, who have been following the situation in
Wisconsin, issued a statement Friday saying it’s a misreading of their "Coincident Indexes" to try and compare one state to another.
They
say the index — which is comprised of several different economic
statistics including housing starts, unemployment claims and wages —
isn’t designed as a ranking. The Fed does not calculate a ranking based
on the index and never has.
Walker and WMC have also been quoting
the Philly Fed’s “Leading Indicator," a 6-month forecasting of the
Coincident Index for each state, to say Wisconsin’s economy is projected
to show the second-largest improvement in the country.
“We do not consider state rankings based on the coincident and leading indexes to be valid,” says Paul Flora, Senior Economic Analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia in an email to the Cap Times.

The fact is Scott Walker's main promise of 250,000 as "the floor, not the ceiling" is one that has never had a chance to come true.